


all along you said you knew this was wrong (but still worth dying for)

by American_Pandora



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe- Modern, F/M, Gen, In which brandon is a more terrible person than in canon, Modern AU, Moral Ambiguity, affair, and i kill off jory's father, astrophysicist! ashara dayne, slightly graphic language, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:31:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/American_Pandora/pseuds/American_Pandora
Summary: Ashara Dayne is not dumb; she has a degree in astrophysics and nuclear engineering, plus minors in chemistry and astronomy. She has attended both Yale and MIT.
But as her mother was fond of telling both her and Arthur (who has, himself, degrees in nuclear engineering and biochemical engineering) whenever their heads swelled with their own intelligence, "Smart boys and smart girls are capable of making very dumb decisions." 
And she was here, making a very, very dumb decision.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from 'Save your heart' by Mayday Parade.

Ashara Dayne gets the text at 1:07 a.m. on a Thursday night. 

Brandon Stark is so predictable it's hilarious. (Then again, the rich playboys she knows often are. For all Brandon hates Robert Baratheon, they are cut of the exact same cloth.) 

She always gets the text messages, late at night, on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Sometimes on Fridays, if he isn't away on business meetings or at some society function. 

A function that she, too, is often at. Usually a stuffy gallery or some tight shirt's New York penthouse. They're good at the game of pretending to only be socialites who know each other in a casual acquaintance. Too good, Ashara thinks sometimes. She wonders if Brandon even knows her at all.

She has had a conversation with Catelyn Tully at one of these functions, while her fiancé's cum dripped out of her cunt, Brandon's arm wrapped around the redhead's waist for the entirety of it. 

( _Getting caught, ruining her good girl image, has always been part of the thrill of Brandon. It's why she let's him talk her into fucking in coat closets, in sickeningly opulent bathrooms, once in his own office an hour before Catelyn was due, where they could be exposed to the world._ )

Ashara Dayne is not dumb; she has a degree in astrophysics _and_ nuclear engineering, plus minors in chemistry and astronomy. She has attended _both_ Yale and MIT. 

But as her mother was fond of telling both her and Arthur (who has, himself, degrees in nuclear engineering and biochemical engineering) whenever their heads swelled with their own intelligence, " _Smart boys and smart girls are capable of making very dumb decisions._ " 

And she was here, making a very, _very_ dumb decision. 

Ashara knows it is wrong, knows that she and Brandon are doing to Catelyn Tully what Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar did to Elia, her _best friend._

Ashara will not have the same excuse as Lyanna though, even if hers was paper thin. Lyanna swore up and down that Rhaegar told her that he and Elia had separated, that they were only together for the children. With Elia and the kids in Washington and Lyanna in New York, she could see how that would be possible for Rhaegar to pull off. 

Ashara has always despised the Senator's son, even if he is Arthur's best friend. At least Lyanna had something to believe in- a major paper had published texts he'd sent her swearing they'd be together. 

There is no hope for she and Brandon. Brandon will never give up his rich playboy lifestyle for her- hell, she's pretty sure he's still fucking Barbrey Ryswell even though he supposedly broke it off with his ex-fiancée. 

Brandon will never give up his rich playboy lifestyle for her, or for his current fiancée, because his inheritance comes with strings; strings as red as the auburn hair on Catelyn Tully's head. 

The irrational part of Ashara's brain- the part of her that hasn't been to NASA bases and even inside Area 51, because Starfall Corporation has contracted with the government. and still thinks the government is hiding aliens from the Roswell Crash- blames Rickard Stark, CEO of Winter Companies, and Hoster Tully, CEO of Riverrun Research and Conservation Technologies Company, for her current situation. 

Who in this day and age demands a _merger_ be sealed with a _marriage?_

Hoster Tully, apparently. 

If he wants to inherit Winter Companies, and Winter Companies wants to merge with Riverrun Conservation Research and Technologies, then Brandon must marry Catelyn Tully.

Ashara thinks it's disgusting, Old Man Tully giving his eldest (and most dear, it's whispered) daughter away like chattel. She think's it's disgusting that Rickard Stark, a man she has greatly respected, is caving. 

Ashara hates Brandon for letting it happen, for not fighting it, and she hates Catelyn goddamn Tully too, for not being angrier, for not refusing, for having the same amount of backbone as a goddamn fish. 

She hates herself the most, though, because this is never going to work. Ashara is making another woman into another Elia. 

 

_Parked at the end of the driveway. See you soon? -B_

 

Ashara stares hard at her phone, wills it to disappear, her _problems_ to disappear. Wills her desire for Brandon to vanish and be replaced with contempt, hatred, anything but what it is she feels. 

 

_Yes. -A_

 

She may be a grown ass woman, but there's something exciting about sneaking behind bush to bush and avoiding the light of the main house. She lives with her family only in the sense that they technically occupy the same address; her parents built her a guest house when she was twenty, so she would have a space of her own but still come home. 

As promised, the Mercedes sits at the end of the driveway, straddling the edge of the street. 

Brandon opens the back door for her from the inside. She slides across the black leather seat into the middle one; the divider is already up, cutting them off from Mr. Cassel. 

Ashara is glad she doesn't have to look the witness to her shame in the eyes tonight. (She wonders what lies Brandon has told him about her, if Mr. Cassel has even thought to ask.)

Brandon's hand grips her thigh a little too hard, and she can smell the brandy on his breath as she buckles in. Neither of them says a word.

* * *

None of them will say a word again that night, except for Mr. Cassel's curse as a car plows in to theirs. 

An indecipherable curse in his thick Scottish brogue will be the last thing he ever says. 

Brandon will open his mouth in confusion before the impact knocks the air out of him. 

He will never draw breath again. 

Ashara- her seatbelt saves her life, and she didn't believe in angels or miracles until then- manages to retain enough consciousness to tell the responding paramedics something very important. When asked who they should call, she will respond "Ned Stark." before the bleed in her brain overpowers her. 

Assumptions will be made. 

Ashara Dayne will never wake up again, though her family keeps her on life support for eleven months. 

Elia Martell holds her best friend's hand as she is taken off life support, and as her body stops breathing. She thinks, with great irony, how Ashara was doing to do great things for the world, with that great brain of hers, and how in the end it is that brain of hers that kills her. 

The toughest bit to swallow is that Aegon and Rhaenys will never know their godmother. 

Elia will make _damn well sure_ that they know their godsister.

( _Their grandfather will never be charged, either, for driving drunk and killing her and Brandon Stark and his driver._ )


End file.
